BIS Data Reveals: Retail Gold Purchases Doubled Over Past Six Months, While Institutions Accelerate Selling

According to Cointelegraph, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) indicated in its quarterly report released Monday that the gold market has presented a striking divergence over the past six months.

Data shows that retail gold purchases surged threefold over the past six months, increasing from approximately $20 billion to approximately $60 billion; while Wall Street institutions have been accelerating their selling over the past four months, creating two sharply opposing market forces.

Kobeissi Letter, citing BIS data, notes that despite retail investors' purchases more than tripling over the past 6 months, institutions sold $1 billion in gold during the same period, with capital outflows accelerating further, especially after the market plunge in January.

This scenario of "retail investors surging in, institutions quietly exiting" ultimately triggered severe fluctuations in the precious metals market. According to GoldPrice's latest data, gold prices have fallen 11% from the all-time high at the end of January, while silver has plummeted 38%.

The BIS points out that behind this sharp reversal, "daily rebalancing of leveraged precious metals ETFs and margin-triggered liquidations amplified volatility," particularly in the silver market. This is because smaller speculative derivatives traders had accumulated highly leveraged long positions before the crash.

Gold surged 60% over the past year, triggering market speculation about "capital migration"—that is, gold's strong performance may come at the expense of Bitcoin, given the competitive relationship between the two as value storage assets.

This speculation is not without reason. The total market capitalization of the crypto market has shrunk approximately 43% from its October 2021 peak, coupled with noticeably cooled retail enthusiasm, adjustments in market expectations for Federal Reserve monetary policy, and recent strength in the US dollar index, which directly triggered price corrections in the crypto market.

The BIS analysis concludes that the decline in gold and silver prices is closely linked to US dollar strength. Since the end of January, the US dollar index has risen 4.7%, and combined with the concurrent shift in monetary policy expectations, this has jointly suppressed gold price performance.

In summary, the sharp collapse in gold and silver prices has been largely influenced by expectations of US dollar appreciation, because purely from the perspective of macroeconomic fundamentals, it is impossible to fully explain this phenomenon.

#比特币 # US Dollar Index